365 Board Games
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| 365 Board Games

So the turkey’s been thoroughly munched, the crackers pulled, and the pathetic jokes read out by all present – what better way to finish off Christmas than to crack open a couple of classic boardgames and retire to your room to play them on your own?

365 Board Games is hoping you replied in the affirmative to that last question, rhetorical though it may have been, as this latest title from Connect2Media would rather you played only against the AI than another living being.

It tempers the blow somewhat, however, with the sheer range of games on offer.

Open the box

While 365 Board Games doesn’t actually have 365 games to play, it does have an awful lot of content for the money, managing to pack in a host of ghosts of boardgames past.

This means that stone-cold classics Chess, Checkers, and Ludo, as well as every southern Mediterranean’s favourite, Backgammon, and the more leftfield choices of Nine Men’s Morris and Reversi are all present in this collection (along with the boring snore-fest that is Tic-Tac Toe).

Each game has three different difficulty levels that appreciably improve the AI’s play and some odd/sensible rule changes that can be made to the gameplay.

Not that you’ll be able to make it so that the knight pieces take two hits to kill and cast fireballs. Instead, these changes take more traditional forms such as ‘player starts first’ or, in the case of Backgammon, setting a target score and allowing the doubling dice.

Boxed in

There's a range of trophies to aim for to keep you interested, and the package as a whole is nicely icy in the way it’s presented – very much in keeping with the festive spirit (so expect it to look out of place in a few month’s time, then).

You’ll not be playing it for that long, however, despite the sheer breadth of games on offer, because of a number of minor interface issues that will keep popping up when you least expect them.

From not being able to manually pick the order of the movement dice on Backgammon, to the utterly painful contortions required to select an empty square in Nine Men’s Morris and unclear selection icon in Chess, there’s always some niggle that will get in the way of fully enjoying the game.

It’s a shame, as even without a multiplayer mode 365 Board Games compares very favourably with its single-game only peers. A little more attention to the interface for the individual components would have made this pack a must-buy for the mobile boardgamer, but as it stands it still offers great value for money.

365 Board Games

What 365 Board Games lacks in multiplayer and a slick interface, it makes up with the sheer range of content on offer
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Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will's obsession with gaming started off with sketching Laser Squad levels on pads of paper, but recently grew into violently shouting "Tango Down!" at random strangers on the street. He now directs that positive energy into his writing (due in no small part to a binding court order).